Boats may be used for leisure and work related activities. For many such activities, a larger boat is more desirable, especially in situations where it is desired to carry a large payload. While large boats provide several benefits, including greater stability, greater payload and more room, larger boats can be more difficult to transport. The width of large boats makes maneuvering them on a trailer difficult and may prevent the trailered boat from traveling on roads with width restrictions. It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a large boat that may be configured to a narrower width for transport.
It would be particularly desirable to narrow the transport width of boats used to perform activities at worksites. Prior art “working boats” may need to be used at a worksite and moved to another worksite multiple times a day. Accordingly, prior art working boats often sacrifice size, payload and stability for narrower transport dimensions.
One type of boat used at worksites is a floating manure agitator. Livestock produce a large amount of manure. The nitrogen content of manure makes it useful as fertilizer on agricultural fields. While manure is continually produced, it is only needed as fertilizer during certain times of the year. During the times it is being produced and not yet needed, it must be stored. It is also desirable to break down manure prior to application as a fertilizer. One method of storing and breaking down livestock manure is a manure lagoon. Manure lagoons are sloped, fully impermeable pits, fifteen to thirty-five feet deep, and may be several hundred feet across.
Manure from a livestock operation is pumped into a lagoon where anaerobic bacteria digest, liquefy, and convert a portion of the manure to carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia and hydrogen sulfide. The resulting supernatant contains nitrogen and calcium. The resulting solids form a sludge that rests on the bottom of the manure lagoon. The sludge is made up of several biodegradable organic solids, including lignin and cellulose. The sludge also contains high concentrations of phosphorous. After anaerobic bacteria breaks down the manure, the manure is pumped from the lagoon to a tank for transport and then applied to an agricultural field.
To prevent an undesirable buildup of sludge at the bottom of the lagoon, it would be desirable to provide a boat with an agitator to create a slurry by moving solids in sludge into suspension within the supernatant. Providing a boat to agitate the manure would overcome prior art difficulties associated with land based propellers not being able to mix sludge at the center of the lagoon. To adequately move the solids in the sludge into suspension, especially at the center of the lagoon, a large pump and spray nozzle are required. A large pump requires a large motor, which in turn requires a large boat to support the motor, pump and spray assembly. As noted above, while the greater size of the boat facilitates the use of larger equipment to more effectively mix the manure within the lagoon, the wider boat has the additional drawback of being difficult to transport. It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a boat with a larger width when the boat is on the water and a narrower width when the boat is being transported.
The difficulties encountered in the prior art discussed hereinabove are substantially eliminated by the present invention.